My three favorite Christmas albums are George Winston's December; the Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack by the Vince Guaraldi trio; and Elizabeth Schwartzkoph's Christmas. Oh, and the original Amahl and the Night Visitors. The latter was two I grew up with,^[1] and the Schwartzkoph is the only one I don't, alas, own.

felt, tassels, machine applique with a bit of hand bead embroidery. Photographed (& made?) in 2010. More of my crappy image manipulation, 06jan14:)

But, even though I haven't much of a head for music, I can still hear her voice singing ‘I Saw Three Ships’ —I probably liked it for several reasons: she sang it very fast, and to my untrained ears it showed some virtuosity; but also, my parents were sailors, and boats were a part of my childhood, so I definitely identified with that aspect.

They went through a series of boats, ending with an Etchells 22, an elegant and graceful day sailor. Some years later, on vacation on the western side of Michigan, I saw a fleet of these boats heading out to race: but whether that memory came before or after that stocking I couldn't tell you. But as in the google images most were white. My parents’ was red, which is a christmasy color, so I made all three red which frankly is unlikely; but then so is The Three Kings coming to see Christ Jesus in boats (even in the mythology of Christmas, where they're ‘properly’ depicted on camels, yes?) In any event I combined these two ideas for this stocking, referencing the goldfish that appeared in two of the earlier stockings.

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